Nick Drake: why???

Are there any other songs that Ledger was filmed simulating suicide to? Is this something he did often?

that footage in question is pretty cool. very sombre.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/leicester/content/images/2006/10/19/dmu_head_in_hands_315x420.jpg

What was "the Ledge" listening to when he died, eh? Eh?

Meet On The Ledge?

Fleetwood Mac, "The Ledge"

http://img502.imageshack.us/img502/1673/tedroslz8.jpg

"Close to the Ledit"

"Hey, what'd you do last night?"

"We decided to stay home-- wound up watching footage of Heath Ledger simulating suicide to Nick Drake's 'Black Eyed Dog'."

"Cool, what a nice way to celebrate the memory of Nick"

I'm holding out for:

Heath Ledger Simulating Suicide to the Music of Nick Drake: The Criterion Collection

yeah i was WEIRDED out by the news (i wrote that gruniad article) but uh edited out all my joke-joke-jokes after reflection on the whole er suicide angle.

There isn't anything about this thing that doesn't make me want to puke.

words fail me, what a sick world.

that footage in question is pretty cool. very sombre.

I was expecting farcial slapstick.

a bunch of unrehearsed session musicians trying to accompany a man who obviously knows his own songs pretty well is never a recipe for success

http://www.cluas.com/indie-music/Portals/0/Blog/Files/14/151/Astral%20Weeks.jpg

http://squirrelthing.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/MD_AnnouncePage_wText.png

cool!

it is going to rock SO HARD.
actually i think there's some recordings of her singing in one of the drake documentaries, and it's pretty nice stuff, you can tell that she influenced nick quite a bit. sort of seems like releasing something by the dude's mom would be the ultimate in barrel scraping, but i am curious to hear it.

ian macdonald's essay on drake is classic.

oh here's a radio show about her: http://www.wnyc.org/shows/spinning/2012/apr/22/

There's a couple of tracks on "Family Tree" she sings on.

This is the missing link in the Nick Drake Story” (Joe Boyd)

We are pleased to announce the release of a privately-pressed CD plus a collection of poems by Molly Drake, Nick Drake’s mother.

Some of you will be aware of her songs having watched the film A Skin Too Few or having bought the compilation album Family Tree.

It is due the response from this exposure that we feel the time may be right to release some more material.

Molly Drake wrote and performed songs just for herself, her friends and her family. She did not seek publication for them or for her poems, which seem to have been deeply personal observations. Fortunately, for us, her husband made amateur recordings of her songs on tapes that have lain dormant for 60 years.

The sound quality of the recordings reflects their home-made nature as well as the age of the magnetic tape. Though they have been repaired and made listenable to, the recordings have not been over-restored, since we feel that the sound quality is an integral part of this first experience of Molly’s music. The entire recording was engineered by John Wood, Nick Drake’s friend, engineer and co-producer of Pink Moon.

The 19 songs include How Wild The Wind Blows, I Remember, Poor Mum and Do You Ever Remember?

The CD comes with a 70 page booklet containing 45 poems housed in a card portfolio.

This initial edition is only available here:

www.alimentation.cc/nick_drake/cds/molly-drake.html

http://www.alimentation.cc/nick_drake/cds/molly-drake.html

so much drake action - http://www.theguardian.com/music/2014/aug/06/nick-drake-book-unreleased-recordings
peel version of cello song is great, tho maybe it should be called flute song now?
and this! http://www.theguardian.com/music/2014/aug/03/nick-drake-rare-tapes-auction-beverley-martyn

and i wrote this thing too! http://pitchfork.com/thepitch/395-invisible-hits-the-unreleased-nick-drake/

Excellent, tylerw!

man that Peel "Three Hours" is so so nice. feel so bad that dude could not find a way through.

What's the sound quality like?

£35 for the normal version might well be pricey but fair

£150 for the 10" single and the fancy version?

Think I'll hang on for the illegal download or whatever

"Road" is oftentimes my favorite Nick Drake song and is also proof that Nick Drake has the most incredible fingerpicking technique of anyone ever.
― Curt1s Stephens, Saturday, June 2, 2007 4:23 PM (7 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is accurate. did he use three fingers in addition to his thumb? trying to wrap my mind around some of his patterns... pretty mindblowing stuff

i think i've read that nick used his right pinky at times

that would make sense. his thumb also sounds good at repeatedly striking the same string. would be hard if you're like me and used to octave-style string patterns.

so clean and droney. i love it. and this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IevsddOcJ7o

yeah he's just so metronomic, unflappable. makes it seem like no big deal, but it obviously is.

Nick Drake: how???

haha yes

Nick Drake: wtf???

"Road" is oftentimes my favorite Nick Drake song and is also proof that Nick Drake has the most incredible fingerpicking technique of anyone ever.
― Curt1s Stephens, Saturday, June 2, 2007 4:23 PM (7 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is accurate. did he use three fingers in addition to his thumb? trying to wrap my mind around some of his patterns... pretty mindblowing stuff

― global tetrahedron, Monday, February 23, 2015 4:30 PM (41 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I don't know about "anyone ever" -- I mean, classical guitarists all use three fingers and thumb in pretty complex patterns (and non-patterns).

is there any known footage of him playing?

nope

& yeah, classically trained people do all kinds of wild technique things on guitar, might be the fact that drake was untrained that takes it into a different realm.

^ yeah, makes his style more sui generis/idiocyncratic. i'm sure there are 'schooled' players who are technically superior but his chops are just kinda mysterious

Where was it that I read that all those weird tunings he used is partly what made him such an awkward performer, and in turn heightened his depression? He'd play a song, then spend five minutes tuning, then song, tune ... etc. That supposedly is something the also forced Joni off the tour circuit. I know dudes like Richard Thompson generally try to stick or adapt to only a couple of tunings (standard and drop D, typically) with lots of capo use to get around the issue.

that sounds a bit mythologized imo, like tuning can be annoying but it doesn't have to take five minutes. don't doubt that he was awkward though

"schooled" just means someone showed you how to do something in person

it means you just get owned a lot

I mean I think Nick Drake is a great guitar player, I just don't buy into the "untrained" vs "trained" mythology. I have no idea whether he ever took a paid guitar lesson, whether he ever looked at a guitar book, or whether he ever sat down with other fingerpickers to learn picking patterns.

he probably did all of that -- i just meant that he wasn't someone who was a classically trained guitarist. he mainly learned from listening to records, afaik.

I dunno, I've seen people take five minutes to keep a guitar in standard. If he was using a whole bunch of weird open tunings and doing it by ear, shit adds up. I read that Joni would have needed something like 35 tunings for her ideal set, since so many of her songs are in a tuning. She apparently got one of those Parker guitars and a MIDI box to artificially alter everything for her.

http://www.guitarplayer.com/artists/1424/under-investigation-joni-mitchell-complete-so-far/50383

Says her songbook breaks down into 42 (!) tunings. Dunno how many Drake used.

surely joni could afford 42 guitars